'It's horrific': Melbourne Airport CEO responds to shocking Rumour File story

Now joining me in the studio is Lorie Argus, who's the CEO of Melbourne Airport, and I've been wanting to get her on for a long time, so thanks for coming in.

Thanks for having me, Jackie.

And it is very timely because we have a lot to talk about.

[laughs]

I've got a laundry list for you today. So firstly, let's talk about the delays, and I guess the first impression that people have when they come to Melbourne is often standing for two or three hours waiting to get through customs in that really narrow hallway. So I guess when you first, um, get told about those every morning, what's your reaction when you see those pictures?

Yes. Well, look, it's frustrating.

Mm.

And it's, it's not the welcome to Melbourne that we want. So I have a KPI with my team that if I've seen it on your feed before I've seen it from my team, then, you know, we've got some work to do with notifications. But, uh, look, it's, it's the, it's not the welcome that we want. So we've gr- we've outgrown the space, we've outgrown the infrastructure. Border Force has outgrown the space and their kiosks, and it's really frustrating because it's so stressful. You've just come off a long haul flight, you just wanna get through. You're at the end of your journey, if you've come all the way to Melbourne, and you wanna get processed as quickly as possible, and you come around that corner in that s- small space and see those big queues and it's, it's stressful for people.

Because that did use to happen, but at the moment it seems to be happening almost daily. Is that fair?

Yeah, look, I think it, there's a few things. We've outgrown the space. We've got record numbers, which I guess is a good problem to have.

Mm.

Uh, we've had some challenges around, um, support staff for clearing people through. We've outgrown the number of kiosks, so it's a bit of a melting pot of issues. But the number one thing that we can do is increase the space, and that's w- what non-way expansion is about with our road network moving out. We really need the footprint to grow out. Um, we need to double that space so that we can get more kiosks in, we can get more immigration clearance areas. It's just far too congested for the amount of traffic that we're doing through that space.

In that peak time, is it fair to say that people will wait two hours to get through the kiosk?

Well, it's, it's very hit and miss, Jackie, because the problem is, on a perfect day-

Mm

... when all of the aircraft arrive on time, the, the s- the system can manage.

Yeah.

But what ends up happening is sometimes if there's weather or if there's other disruptions for airlines off schedule, you sometimes end, end up with 2,000 or 3,000 more passengers at that point in time than you were expecting, and the infrastructure just can't cope. Um, sometimes those queues look really quite distressing, but they clear really quickly because it's a, it's straight through the kio- the kiosk and straight out. Sometimes, though, we do have reports for passengers waiting an hour to two hours, which is completely unacceptable.

Mm.

And then, of course, you go through and have to get your bag, and then, of course, you go through and have to deal with biosecurity and